


Lucky All the Time

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dubcon dynamic, Emetophobia, F/F, seriously there is a lot of vomiting.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:11:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Awkward moments at a New Year's party for total assholes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky All the Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tassledown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassledown/gifts).



On New Year's Eve Felicja went hunting. The prey adorned herself obligingly in bright gold braid and stiff creases and a little star on a ribbon dangling right over--well, the heart is more central than people assume, but over a lung, anyway--and shoes so shiny so they threw little white reflections everywhere. _Dis_ obligingly she had surrounded herself with people who were just aching for an excuse to flinch and start spraying gunfire like perfume samples. (Well, for a definition of people.) It wasn't likely she'd leave the party at any convenient hour, so Felicja had to attend. She tied on a wrap dress, favored attire of people who value being able to kick over their own heads even in formal settings, bought an invitation for a frankly ludicrous amount, and breezed in the door with death pressed into her thighs like the hands of a lover.

Once in the door it was a matter of gravity. The room was large enough to spin and circle and stalk the heavyweights, and the lesser lights did. General Sorokina was such a distortion, of course, of course, whether for the strong, amused mouth, the aura of goodwill, the superior bottle service, or the fact that snubbing her could get your teeth kicked down your throat. Felicja found herself a nice steady orbit where a wisp of dark hair or expansive gesturing hand was always visible in the corner of her eye but she was in no danger of falling down into Sorokina's crowd until she wanted to. Things were going well.

At an hour to midnight Felicja turned away from the bar and saw Sorokina's hand on the shoulder of a cocktail waitress, Sorokina's head thrown back in that horrible shouting laugh, Sorokina's long golden throat exposed, and did not see the bartender take out his heavy metal cocktail shaker and bring it slamming down on the back of her head.

Felicja woke up retching. Standard procedure for waking up in a place where people probably wanted to kill you was to feign unconsciousness for as long as you could, but vomiting had its own sense of priorities. She lurched onto her side and managed to get at least part of the splatter onto some offensively shiny shoes. There was a sharp curse and the shoes' owner drew back one foot, and Felicja wasn't going to be able to protect herself, her body felt like rotten fruit and her brain was sluggish and probably fucking bleeding, but she tried to bring a hand up anyway.

"Corporal," Sorokina said. The boot lowered itself immediately back to the ground. Felicja repurposed her lifted hand to move around her skull and gently touch the back of her head. The hair was blood-matted and sticky, and any contact hurt. Thinking hurt. But death would be painless, so that pain would just have to be endured.

She rolled onto her back, raised herself to her elbows with a grunt, and took stock. The light smeared and flashed and stabbed before it would settle properly in her eyes--definitely concussed. Her dress was untied. Her well-stocked legs were covered with empty holsters and sheaths that gaped like broken windows. Her breasts sagged in her too-large bra, without any little vials or rope cords to fill the space.

General Viktoriya Sorokina sat in a metal folding chair in the middle of the room, looking at Felicja lying on the floor in front of her. The light glinting off her medals raked Felicja's eyes. Only her and two guards and Felicja in the room, some small windowless affair without furniture that had probably seen this sordid bit of theatre play out more than once. Felicja spared a prayer for the third act reversal.

"Most people just say hello," Felicja said, eventually, when it became clear Sorokina was content to eye her like a cake in a window.

"Forgive me," Sorokina said. "I was very badly brought up."

Felicja nodded and regretted it. She sat up with care. When her head stopped feeling like sloshing sewage, she reached down and started unbuckling one of her thigh holsters. Her attempted makeover specialist tensed, hand dropping to his belt, but Sorokina didn't say a word, and he didn't move to stop her.

"What a good dog," Felicja commented. She laid the holster aside and rubbed the red, itchy indentations the straps had left on her skin.

"Aren't you going to feign innocence?" Sorokina inquired, sounding amused. Felicja looked at her, back at her legs, and back at Sorokina.

"Aren't you supposed to be smart?"

"Corporal," Sorokina said. "Break two of her fingers."

Mr. Vomit-Boots stepped forward, and Felicja hurled herself at his knees, an awkward whole body affair that left her stomach lurching again but succeeded in taking him down. He landed on his elbows, taking his hands up away from his gun, Christ, was it open mic night in the bodyguard industry? Felicja without a concussion could have risen over him like the tide, taken the gun, changed some minds.

Tonight she got one hand on the holster before Sorokina grabbed her by the hair and threw her back to the floor.

Now Sorokina looked thoughtful, as she stood over her, shaking a few loose strands of hair off her fingers. Felicja fought to stop herself curling up as bile rose in her stomach again.

"Corporal," Sorokina said. "Break two of her fingers."

"Surely we can talk about this," Felicja said to the ceiling.

"Later," Sorokina said. She pulled off one of her gloves and straddled Felicja's body to gently stuff it between her teeth, making her gag harder. The guard from the door came over to help hold her down, and between the two of them Felicja was eventually forced to go limp, chest heaving against Sorokina's thighs, arm held straight against the floor.

"Open your fist or it will be the whole hand," Sorokina said, stroking the side of her face. It took long seconds for Felicja to force herself to comply. Sorokina's bare hand clamped over her mouth, driving her teeth and her scream into the leather of her glove as the guard's foot came down.

Sorokina's expression was cool and opaque when Felicja managed to look at her again, but the muscles in her legs were tense and tight as iron. She took her hand off Felicja's mouth, and her eyes stuck on her wet and swollen lips for a moment, and on the dart of her tongue as she pushed the glove out. Sorokina took the glove and stuffed it into a pocket. After too long a moment Sorokina stood back up and waved her guards off.

"Do we understand each other?" Sorokina said.

"You don't want me screaming," is what Felicja's concussion and pain-addled brain came up with.

"Well, I have a reputation to maintain," Sorokina said. "But the New Year is in thirty five minutes, and when the clock strikes, I'll be able to make all the noise I want."

She went back to her chair. Felicja took shallow breaths and tried to find space in the world around the pain. She'd survived worse. She was better than this, this butcher, this _hack_ , this underwhelming thug with her store-bought rank. Spite and pride got her off her back and into a sitting position.

"Talk to me," Sorokina said. "Tell me all the very good reasons you shouldn't die tonight."

"The dry cleaning?"

"As if I do my own laundry."

"Because then you'll never know who hired me."

"I can't name ten people who don't want me dead. Next."

"Because you'd miss me, Vika," Felicja said.

Sorokina’s silence rang like a bell. She’d expected a laugh, one of her expressive gestures, but Sorokina was just still and quiet for too many of Felicja’s precious remaining seconds.

“I missed you for ten years,” Sorokina said, eventually. “I survived that. I’m not sure I’ll survive letting you out of this room.”

"Do I look like such a threat right now?" Felicja said wistfully, looking at the twisted hand curled in her lap.

"You have always been the greatest threat to me," Sorokina said, and Felicja's face twisted into a sneer. She forced herself to twitch her battered hand, to feel the muscles slide against the fractured bone.

"Shut the fuck up," Felicja said. "Like that's supposed to charm me, you shameless fucking--you should be in the Hague."

"Where did you catch morals, Felicja?"

"I didn't leave you because I saw a sad orphan with a puppy, if that's what you're getting at," Felicja said. "It was entirely your personality."

"Thirty minutes," Sorokina said.

"Because I _wasn't here for you_ , you self important bitch," Felicja said. "I'm here for your supplier."

Sorokina rolled that one around in her head for a while, fingers drumming on her crossed arms. "Bullshit."

"You'd recognize me blind drunk with a bag on your head," Felicja said. "And here I am--I'm not even wearing a wig. You were supposed to behave like a reasonable fucking person, which was my first mistake, like a reasonable fucking adult and merely have a screaming argument with me over the champagne toast, and in the confusion the gossip-hungry idiot gets a syringe in the stomach. I'm back outside in time to watch the fireworks. But instead I'm sitting around in the turnip cellar with my tits out because you--"

"If that's true," Sorokina said. "Why didn't you lead with that?" Her eyes hadn't even flickered to Felicja's chest. Discouraging.

"I didn't think you'd believe me," she said. "Or care if you did."

"I don't believe you," Sorokina said. "Which leaves me in something of an awkward position, Felicja. I need some surety."

"She's double crossing you," Felicja said. "She--"

"Twenty-five minutes," Sorokina said. "I sell guns to people who shouldn't be allowed to have can openers. My left foot would double cross my right, if there was money in it. I need surety you don't want me dead, Felicja."

"She's depositing the money into--"

"Twenty four minutes."

 "You broke my fucking hand!"

 Sorokina flicked her fingers. The show off. "You're left handed. Don't snivel."

 Felicja licked her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, just for a second. A bad plan, when the darkness felt so good on her throbbing head. She forced them back open at Sorokina's dry "Twenty three minutes."

"Send them out," Felicja said. "At least send them out."

"No."

Her teeth ground. She got her legs under her, slow as a fawn, useless hand held to her chest, and tried one step, then another. Sorokina's eyes stayed on her. The blankness was peeling up at the edges, and there was so much hunger underneath.

Felicja made it to her chair and came down on one knee on the edge of the chair between Sorokina's legs. Sorokina's hands were resting easily on her thighs, and didn't even clench when Felicja grabbed her shoulder with her good hand, twisting the stiff fabric and braid in her grip. So much control, except for the avid, animal longing in her eyes.

"You're so stupid," Felicja said. "This is so stupid."

"You're a facile liar," Sorokina said. "But you've never fucked your way out of trouble in your life. You can't fake this. You never could."

"It's been ten years."

Sorokina shrugged. "People don't change that much."

" _People don't-_ -" Felicja's grip tightened, then released abruptly. She tried to stand up, away from this ridiculous, arrogant, stupid, treacherous, dangerous woman, but Sorokina reached up and pulled her back. Felicja fell down into her, into the curve of Sorokina's arm around her waist and the deceptive softness of her lap. They were close enough one of her medals scraped the cup of Felicja's bra. Not real contact, but Sorokina's pupils had swallowed her irises anyway.

Felicja didn't want to know what she looked like, half-naked, half-sick, injured in the arms of someone who used to kiss her eyelids and had held her down while her fingers were broken. She let her neck curve forward, let their foreheads rest against each other.

"Twenty--"

Felicja kissed her. She hurt everywhere and the remnants of nausea were clawing at her throat. There was no pleasure in it, but it was--it was so damned familiar. Ten years and it was so familiar. Ten years ripping away like cling wrap, leaving a stupid kid who had called this hungry, violent woman home.

"You see," Sorokina said. Her gloved hand was stroking Felicja's hip, tiny motions, like she couldn't stop herself. "People don't change that much."

 "You changed your drink," Felicja said. She ran her tongue along her teeth. "What is that?"

Sorokina ignored that. She tilted her head to one side and was looking at Felicja's body in a way she didn't have a right to, anymore, but Felicja wasn't thinking about that, right now, because right now her mouth tasted like cinnamon.

"Have you been chewing gum?"

Sorokina quirked an eyebrow at her and didn't answer. Her head started to dip towards Felicja again. Felicja put the heel of her injured hand against Sorokina's forehead and shoved her head backwards to stare at her pupils.

"You changed your fucking drink," Felicja said. "Oh fuck me. Fuck you, fuck your mother. You weren't supposed to change."

"--Licja," she said. The stink of cinnamon hung between them. "What did you do?"

 "You need to start throwing up, Vika," Felicja said. "I'm sorry. You have fourteen minutes."

" _What did you do_?"

"I _poisoned your fucking party_ ," Felicja shouted back. "The bartender was supposed to give me to you _before_ passing out the cocktails, now start throwing up!"

Sorokina stared at her. "Are you saving my life?"

 "Fuck you," Felicja said, and let go of her shoulder to jab her fingers between Sorokina's parted lips. She got dumped onto the floor for her trouble.

 "Wait, are we--" One of the guards said, making Felicja flinch slightly. She'd nearly forgotten them.

 "Probably," she said, vaguely apologetic. "If you drank anything that wasn't pure seltzer water, anyway."

 "This is the most romantic thing you've ever done for me," Sorokina said, before turning aside and shoving her fingers down her throat.

 "We are not getting back together," Felicja snapped. "I left you because you solve your problems by breaking people's fucking hands. Don't retort! You will literally die."

 “I’m a crime lord, what am I meant to do?”

 “You were meant to leave work at work! Don’t stop vomiting! Jesus,” she added, stepping away from Sokorina and a too intimate knowledge of her breakfast. The guards had followed suit, and the room was rapidly becoming smaller and more disgusting. “Just because I feel weird about murdering someone I’ve been wrist deep in is no reason to read romance into it.”

 Felicja kept stepping back until her back hit a wall, and she slid down it to sit with her knees up and finally, finally close her eyes. Tipping her head back hurt too much so she propped it on the good hand and counted breaths, slow and even.

 “Happy fucking New Year to me,” she muttered. She devoutly hoped the idea that your midnight would set the tone for the rest of the year was wrong. Rescuing people was more work than it was worth. “Someone locked that door, right? Not everyone is going to drop at once and this is the only door strong enough to--”

“Oh my god, Masha is out there,” Vomit Boots the second cried, and dove for the door. Felicja sighed and went after him. No rest for the wicked.


End file.
